http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=211800396

Available with Gmail Labs... Amazing, but US only...

To activate : go to labs, then enter number in the search field of Gmail chat, then choose SMS.

I'm testing it with Haochi...

Ok, does not work with canadian numbers... :(

http://mail.google.com/sms points to http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=112176

The "personal" number attributed to Haochi is located in Montana (Area code 406).

Here is a screen of Haochi SMS :

http://www.zorgloob.com/images/gmailsms.jpg

The HELP answer form Google is :

"Gmail SMS Service. See mail.google.com/sms for more details. Send STOP to block all msgs. START to resume again. Send BLOCK to stop all msgs from one person, UNBLOCK to start again."

I also tried to send a SMS from another cell phone and I receive the answer :

"No one uses this service number"

I don't know how the system works... but you can not send SMS to somebody until you received one from him...

When you receive an SMS message from a Gmail contact, add the incoming number to your phone's address book (this number is associated with the sender's Gmail account, so you can use it to send Chat messages to that person in the future). Then, you can reply to the message as you would any other text message, and your reply appears as a Chat message in your friend's Gmail account.

One thing to keep in mind about these numbers, though, is that after 30 days of inactivity, they'll get recycled. In other words, if your friend sends you an SMS message from Gmail but then doesn't send anyone SMS from Gmail for over a month, the number associated with his Gmail account will become associated with another Gmail account.

Luka: "One thing to keep in mind about these numbers, though, is that after 30 days of inactivity, they'll get recycled. In other words, if your friend sends you an SMS message from Gmail but then doesn't send anyone SMS from Gmail for over a month, the number associated with his Gmail account will become associated with another Gmail account."

This could be a potential privacy issue, no?

I wonder why only US numbers as of now? Is it BETA too ;)

Google's SMS channel is getting popular in India and I hope Google will soon start this service in India as well as other countries

What about Google's Jaiku and as said above, Google's SMS channel? They also have SMS for personal communication in Dodgeball and Grandcentral. So for now Google have at least 5 different SMS-solutions. Any integration in sight?

wonder: I think that when an number is recycled you have to receive a SMS message again from that number before you can send to it again.

Luka said:
>>I also tried to send a SMS from another cell phone and I receive the answer :

"No one uses this service number"

I don't know how the system works... but you can not send SMS to somebody until you received one from him...<<

Gmail Chat SMS was removed from Gmail lab

see gmail posting:

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/almost-new-in-labs-sms-text-messaging.html

there were some bugs

Great move!! (even if it's US only)

This will encourage users to add phone numbers of their friends to contacts on Gmail, and by that, users will organize all their information in a single Google account.
Sounds threatening?
All you need is a clever password, and leave the rest to Google ;)

(Example of storing phone numbers into the contacts manager)

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/1559/ron1om4.jpg

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/7770/ron2ep1.jpg

A bit slow on the bug fixes for this.